Why Did Trump Lose It Over Natalie Harp—and Who Is She, Anyway? Unfortunately, I’ve Learned Too Much.

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On Sunday, Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff said something that seems to have truly pissed off Trumpworld: He gave a speech where he dared to mention a woman in the Trump orbit named “Natalie”—just Natalie, no last name given.

Speaking at a campaign event—he is up for re-election in November—Ossoff said the following about Trump to a crowd: “While the sailors on the Lincoln fight his war, while he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings, he golfs, and trades stocks.” He went on, “He doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar.”

Who is this Natalie that Trump wants to—pause for a full-body shudder— travel with? It’s not anything so obvious as an affair, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s somehow worse. Natalie is Natalie Harp, but she’s better known as Trump’s so-called “human printer.” As an executive assistant in the White House, her job is to follow Trump around with a wireless printer, supplying him with a steady flow of articles and memes about him for him to take in. If you’re wondering why such a position is necessary in the age of the smartphone and tablet, recall that our president, ever the boomer, prefers things in hard copy. (Who says he’s not creating jobs?) Harp also sometimes posts for Trump on social media—people on his team have in fact blamed her for some of his very worst, most racist posts. She makes a salary of $150,000 doing this, by the way.

Harp has been part of Trump’s staff, and reported on in media outlets like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, for a while now. After a stint working as an anchor at One America News Network, she joined Trump’s team in 2022, where she first earned the “human printer” nickname. As that epithet being bestowed on her might imply, she is not exactly beloved among the rest of Trump’s staff. It’s been reported that they have tried and failed numerous times to push her out, worrying that she is a danger to herself and the president. The deal seems to be that she’s so scarily devoted to Trump that she worries her colleagues, which is saying something. But scary levels of devotion, it should perhaps be no surprise, turn out to be a register that really works for our president, and all this has paradoxically ensured her continued employment in the White House. Maybe all it takes to get some job security in the Trump admin is do what Harp did and write creepy letters to Trump in which you refer to him as your “Guardian and Protector in this Life.”

If all this is public knowledge and has been for some time, one wonders why Trumpworld was quite so rattled about Ossoff’s mention of Natalie.